Cheesemakers didn’t always have access to plastic packaging materials. It wasn’t until after World War II that plastic packaging became popular in the dairy industry. So, what did cheesemakers do before that?

Some cheesemakers dipped their cheeses in wax (e.g., Edam, Gouda). Other cheesemakers, after brining, let the surface of their cheese dry during aging, which resulted in a natural hard rind on the outside of the cheese (e.g., Swiss). For some types of cheese, the outside was regularly washed/salted to encourage a surface microflora such as for smear ripened cheeses (e.g., Limburger, Gruyère).

Then there are some cheesemakers who wrap their cheese with linen-type cloths. Why do they do this? If you store a block of cheese in a room without any packaging, molds will quickly grow over it, and the cheesemaker needs to trim off that part of the cheese to remove the mold. There is quite a lot of cheese loss with this process. Of course, there are some cheeses, like Camembert, where mold growth is desired and necessary but, if the cheesemaker is producing an English-style cheese, excessive surface mold growth is not desired. 

It is believed that bandaged or clothbound cheeses started in Somerset, England, where cheesemakers produced large wheels (up to 90 lbs.) of Cheddar-style cheeses that were aged for up to three years. These cheesemakers discovered that, by wrapping their cheese in cheesecloth and also coating it with a fat, they could keep excessive mold off the surface of the cheese and create a semipermeable layer that allowed some air transfer during aging, which in turn resulted in a cheese with the desired body and flavor. Mold growth still occurs on bandaged cheeses, but it grows on the cloth, which can be taken off and washed. It’s likely this mold growth impacts cheese flavor development as well. Some of the traditional English bandaged cheeses include Cheshire, Lancashire, Double Gloucester, Red Leicester, and Wensleydale.

Making bandaged cheese

Typically, the cloth is applied either before the cheese goes into the form and is then pressed or is applied after it is taken out of the form and before the cheese is placed in the aging room. Cheesemakers will apply a piece of cloth on the top of the wheel or block and brush on some softened fat like lard or butter and then repeat the process on the bottom of the cheese. Then a longer piece of cloth is used to wrap the sides and, once again, fat is applied to the sides to “seal” the cheese and reduce moisture loss during aging as well as protect against cheese mites. These cheeses are often aged in caves or aging rooms on wood boards. It is important to correctly dial in the aging conditions and have the correct temperature, humidity, and air flow for the particular cheese variety. These cheeses can get dried out too much if not aged under the correct conditions. 

Staff at the Center for Dairy Research have also discovered that bandaged cheeses can be more susceptible to excessive cracking during aging if the room humidity is too low. This is a problem because mold will get into these cracks and, when the cheese is cut open for retail sale, the problem will become apparent. Cheesemakers or retailers have to trim off the mold in the interior of the cheese block or wheel resulting in more cheese losses. If the initial cheese is too acid/too low of pH, cracking is more likely to occur. Of course, there are likely other contributing causes as well such as improper aging conditions or poor curd handling/salting.

In the U.S., there are several prominent bandaged cheeses, including Bleu Mont Dairy Bandaged Cheddar produced by Willi Lehner in Wisconsin and Clothbound Cabot aged by Jasper Hill in Vermont. Visually, bandaged cheeses look very different. Once the cloth is removed, typically there is a little mold on the surface. These cheeses have a slightly drier (due to moisture losses during aging) and crumbly body with distinctive, sharp tastes. Often the flavor is described as an earthy taste, but a whole range of different flavor notes can be produced in these cheeses depending on how they are made and aged. Jeanne Carpenter, author of the Cheese Underground blog, writes, “The cool thing about most bandaged cheddars is they taste nothing like how their rind smells — a good, bandaged cheddar is nutty, with hints of fruit on the finish, with calcium lactate crystals dotting the paste.”

It is also interesting to compare the flavor development of a vacuum-sealed Cheddar and a bandaged Cheddar. Of course, some of the flavor differences are due to the growth of mold on bandaged Cheddar and the flavors that mold growth produces. However, another important aspect of the difference in flavor development between vacuum-sealed aged Cheddar and bandaged Cheddar is the presence or absence of oxygen in the cheese. Oxygen levels in the interior of the cheese can drive flavor development pathways in different directions. For example, in vacuum-sealed Cheddar, we tend to get flavors such as sulfur notes in aged Cheddar, which we rarely see in bandaged Cheddar. 

Bandaged cheeses are a kind of a return to an earlier cheesemaking era when plastic packaging wasn’t available, and the cheesemaker had to use the simple technology that they had at hand. Bandaged cheeses are a different way of producing cheese and give consumers interesting options as not everyone wants the standard block commodity style Cheddar. Many consumers want stronger styles with unique flavors and bandaged cheeses helps with this.